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RB: So following college, how did you come back to this region? Did you come straight back to the Philadelphia region?

MM: I said to Mom and Dad, "You know, I'd like to go abroad," having had that experience in Ghana. And, "I think I want to go to Japan." My dad says, "Well, you don't have any Japanese," I thought, "Yeah." But the Quakers from the 1860s had a relationship, Philadelphia Quakers and women with Japan, with Tokyo, and the Friends School there. And at that point, there was a Quaker committee here in Philadelphia that was assigned to send two young American women to teach English conversation. And between the two of us, we were supposed to teach half the school each, six hundred kids, English conversation. [Laughs] So it was a ridiculous assignment. But anyway, so I went, and I learned to... well, that was '71 to '73, so I say that to anybody else, and that's like ancient years ago. But it was the experience of learning I'm never going to be Japanese. I don't have the depth of the language, I don't have the culture. I was going over with women's rights and why do these girls have to wear the uniforms of these roles, et cetera. Just that I didn't have the culture and the language. I appreciate the aesthetics, I could learn tea ceremony, but there was, the United States was home.

RB: In your time in Japan, were you able to connect with any distant family? Did you have any relations that were still alive in Japan?

MM: We did, but there was, again, without the language and working full time teaching, I didn't have big hunks of time. I did go down to Fukuoka twice. And before I left Japan in '73, I thought I should take a practice trip and see if I can land in another country and still feel adaptable enough. And there was a Quaker woman who had taught at Tokyo Friends School, and she was in Korea. So she welcomed me to come over and sort of set up, go visit here, here and here, and then I took the ferry. So this is maybe over a ten-day, two-week period, came back across from Pusan to Fukuoka, and our relative met us. And Keiko-san, Moriuchi, she was educated, she had enough English, some English, but she could simplify her language so I wasn't totally lost. So she and her husband lived, were very much working class. Life wasn't easy, I think. But she was off in the kitchen fixing supper, and so her husband is trying to entertain the guest. And I'm listening to him, and I'm going, "I can't understand anything he's saying, because he had a very strong Fukuoka dialect, accent." I don't think the whole time... he didn't understand that I look like I should know and understand, and the communication just wasn't happening. That was one of those instances of realizing, okay, I've been in a comfortable little nest within this Tokyo Friends School where people knew who I was, that my Japanese was limited, and that I was learning, they were sending me to Japanese school. I was never going to get fluent. [Laughs]

RB: So did you have any other memorable experiences in Japan around maybe cross-cultural misunderstandings or other moments where you either felt out of place or suddenly connected in some way?

MM: Good question. I think in general, there was just always this kindness within the culture. I can't remember any particular... I'll probably remember something afterwards, but not right off the bat.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.